Days before the phone hacking trial of former
News Corporation
executive Rebekah Brooks is due to open in London on Monday, a new book has revealed a pattern of dirty tricks and questionable practices in
Rupert Murdoch
’s US media businesses.

David Folkenflik, the media ­correspondent for National Public Radio in the US, says Fox News staff threatened journalists, used dummy email accounts to plant false stories, and took pains to ensure a barrage of fabricated posts on internet blogs could not be traced back to News Corp or 21st Century Fox.

In his book Murdoch’s World, released in the US and Australia this week, Mr Folkenflik also claims that News Corp chief executive Robert Thomson attempted to block or play down the The Wall Street ­Journal’s coverage of the UK ­hacking scandal when he was managing editor.

Spotlight on News Corp

While the Journal has denied the claims, Mr Folkenflik’s book puts a spotlight on News Corp and 21st Century Fox business practices in the US just as the four-month trial of Mrs Brooks, UK Prime Minister David Cameron’s former media adviser Andy Coulson, and senior News of the World editors begins.

Jury selection is expected to take two days before the prosecution begins its opening address on Wednesday.

The case is expected to explore the relationship between Mrs Brooks, who headed News Corp UK, and Mr Coulson.

Their lawyers have argued unsuccessfully that listening to someone’s voicemail after they have already accessed it does not constitute telephone interception.

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Mr Folkenflik writes that The New York Times media reporter Timothy Arango said he received an anonymous threat from a Fox News employee who was angered he was writing about stronger ­ratings for CNN, and warned that he would be attacked personally.

Sock puppet posts

The day Mr Arango’s story ran he was contacted by a gossip website which ran a story claiming he had secretly been in rehab for ­substance abuse. Fox PR staff used more than 20 aliases apiece (which were known as “sock puppets") to make posts on websites countering negative or even neutral comments about Fox.

In another attempt to write about CNN’s rating success, reporter ­Matthew Flamm at Crain’s New York Business was diverted to write about inside information he received in emails from a Yahoo account of a Fox producer.

Fox ridiculed Mr Flamm’s story as absurd and used it to undermine all of his reporting on Fox.

The email account turned out to be fake and Mr Folkenflik said a former Fox News staff member told him it had been a set-up.